Lecturer in Family Law 

Advisor of Studies/Year 3 Lead Single Hons LLB

My research falls mainly within the field of Critical Adoption Studies, in particular those aspects of law, policy, and literary fiction which highlight the systemic and widespread unconscious biases - and intergenerational harms - that tend to surround and shape adoptees' human rights within issues of familial and identity losses. It aims to make sense of the various laws, customs, beliefs, and misapprehensions that serve to perpetuate the various myths surrounding deprivations of origin (genetic, cultural, and social) and entrench those inequalities of treatment that can easily arise in connection with adoption, donor conception, and surrogacy.

My most recent monograph is 'Genetic Stigma in Law and Literature: Orphanhood, Adoption, and the Right to Reunion' (Palgrave, 2024) which builds upon my earlier work 'A Law of Blood-ties: The 'Right' to Access Genetic Ancestry' (Springer, 2014). Since 2004, I have also published within a wide variety of peer-reviewed academic journals in the fields of law and the humanities (e.g. Law, Culture and The Humanities, Adoption & Culture, Liverpool Law Review, Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, Indigenous Law Bulletin, Steinbeck Review) on issues of familial justice and child rights, and origin losses. I have also been invited to contribute chapters to edited collections on adoption law and child rights-related issues (e.g. 'Absented Mothers in Ireland and Elsewhere' in Mullany and O'Reilly eds) The Missing Mother (Demeter Press, 2024), 'Child Abduction Law in the Wake of Brexit' in 'Brexit, Droits et Libertes' (Barbe and Koumpli, Bruylant, 2022).

I am currently working on a third monograph (for the Formations series, in conjunction with the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture, U.S.) which focuses upon the rich traditions and histories of folkloric orality that were the precursors to adoption law and policy. 

In addition to my research on areas of Critical Adoption Studies/Adoptees' Rights, I also research and publish within the field of the Humanities, e.g. exploring issues of social justice as they appear in works of fiction. Recent pieces include: 

'Social Justice Tropes in Law and Literature: Rights Narratives, Legal Fictions, (Un)writeable Wrongs' [Special Issue] Liverpool Law Review (2023) (44) (3) 

'The Rationing of essential resources in times of crisis: Logan's Run and the 'science-fictional' right to life' Liverpool Law Review (2023) 44 p 427-446 (with R Pulvirenti)

'The Grapes of Wrath: An artful jurisprudence' (Steinbeck Review) 2021 

As a former Senior Faculty Fellow for Learning and Teaching (2015-2018, EHU) I also led on a multi-disciplinary edited collection: 

Employability via Higher Education: Sustainability as Scholarship (Ed.) (Springer, 2019)

and on a human rights edited collection

Justiciability of Human Rights law in Domestic Jurisdictions (Ed., with J Miller) (Springer, 2016)